Short Stories. Photos and pictures. Poems even.

Hunting for a tree

When children were small we used to drive Upstate to pick up our own Christmas tree. We spent a whole day, drove up about two hours to the same tree farm. We walked around looking for the perfect one. Once found we sat by it for a while, and the kids helped Daddy to cut it and pack it and drag down to the car. Once the tree was tied we sat by the fire pit and ate our sandwiches and drank hot cacao. Of course there was endless running around in the woods, just like back home in Finland.

We haven’t done this for years, school, work whatever came in the way. But now when we had a visitor from out of country, we wanted to show a little bit more than the island. Mountains. Let’s go and get the tree! Good idea! My husband, daughter-in-love, her sister and me packed into the car with saw and axe and whatever, no lunch through.

It was a beautiful day, the hills rolled ahead of us with barely any traffic. We arrived at the farm, few people were around. The ladies in shop making decorations were busy. We aimed into the woods. The tree was found, approved by me of course. It has to have stern branches to hold a lots of balls and it has to smell like a real fir tree. And we made the girls, city girls, cut the tree down. It was fun, and surprisingly, they did it well. I think we let them do it next year also! We fooled around the packing area as before, but now there was no fire. Maybe it was too early in the season.

The farm also grows hybrid anemones, so we were allowed to peek into the greenhouse. Beautiful! All we needed now is to find a place to eat. And wait for Christmas.